Eraser Series and related work...In the early 1980's,
I made the first of my prints that used the image of an eraser, in a
piece about censorship. But 20 years later, the eraser seemed to symbolize
the ultimate fear, that of our own non-existence.
In this series, small stages are set with tiny pencil drawings of figures,
some in boxes with a variety of looming erasers. The delicate drawings
of people, buildings, animals and trees are rendered in pencil, and the
eraser is the instrument of their annihilation. The names and
characteristics of the erasers vary from the ubiquitous "Pink Pearl" to
the sinister "Magic
Rub," "General's," Or "Mars, God of War". This series
includes "Pink Pearl Skeleton with a Blue Clown," whose
exercise in futility mimics an early Ringling Brothers' Circus routine
whose clown tried to run away from the skeleton attached to his back. "The
Sheltering Sky," with it's figures of Kit and Port inside a broken egg-shell,
was inspired by the Paul Bowles' book, and his character, Kit, who lived
in fear of the terrors lurking beyond the thin membrane of sky that protects
us.